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How To Start Out a Lifestyle Blog

You are considering starting a lifestyle blog, but are not sure where to start. Workouts, healthy nutrition, and style might already be in your blood, and you just need a little direction of how to tie them all together. It will be your online diary, but now the question is how are you going to show it to the right public in order to build an engaging community.

Here are a few tips and tricks to consider on the way:

1. Be transparent in your endeavors. Let others know up front if you’re selling or marketing a product. Transparency is the only way of gaining your customer’s trust.

2. Let your audience know who you are and who you aspire to become. Have a section telling your readers about yourself and why are you so passionate about what you do. They need to find common ground to at least virtually befriend you.

3. Navigating through websites has never been more hectic. Make the journey for your audience easy. Have a simple and clear menu bar and at least one search box. You want to rank high for different keywords related to your endeavors. Use the online tools available to you to seek out where your potential audience hangs.

4. Set a routine that works for you and gives them new content. Regularly. Browsing the web has come into our blood just like we eat, sleep and relax. If you’re selling something, you want to be there when your customers need your help. You can prepare for this by having an ample amount of information ready in advance. Similarly, you may use a certain program or software to set schedules on when you want to publish certain content. When venturing out on an online quest, routines matter.

5. And so does valuable content. It mustn’t be much. It can be a photo or two, maybe a mind map, an inspirational quote. Stand firm and build your brand. Brag a little too if needed. Hey, if you’re not going to do it, no one’s going to do it for you.

6. Be different. Tell your audience what differentiates you from the person trying to make ends meet on the tap right next to yours. Put yourself out there a little. At the end of the day, we make business with people. Business to customer is no longer only what the name proposes. It rather changed to human to human.

7. When possible be available to your readers. You got them to your site because they found a common thing that you are sharing. Or even better, you can help them solve their problems. Make sure you talk to them when they reach out to you.

8. Make them feel exclusive. I’ve never heard anyone say that they’re not proud to be a member of a Country Club. Offer free features to those who set sail with you.

9. Give, give and give. Then you can ask something in return. I mentioned human to human earlier, we need to know the person who we are making business with in order to feel secure in our decisions. In order to make decisions, we need selection. Don’t be the person who feeds business to your competition because you’re too lazy to act human.

10. Let them comment directly under your content. There will always be jealousy or discontent, don’t be afraid of it. If someone says something negative, your response can exceed and even strengthen your stance. Never, and please never, delete negative feedback, rather rise above it. Offer dissatisfied customers your apologies and something in return; possibly a discount on their next order or something of the same sort.

Online presence is a funny thing. You might only get rewarded for being transparent and building a trusting community of followers. It is more of a marathon than a sprint. But if you’re passionate about something and seek ways to share your knowledge with others, the web is the perfect place for you to be.